Defence gets N465bn in 2017 Budget

Defence is one of the four sectors that got the highest current allocation of a total of N465.87 billion in the 2017 budget that is before the National Assembly for consideration.
According to the breakdown given by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udoma, on Monday, the Ministry of Defence received N325.87 billion as recurrent vote in the budget proposal.
It, however, came fourth in capital allocation with N140 billion.
The Ministry of Interior got the highest recurrent allocation of N482.37 billion and N63 billion capital vote for the period.
The other sectors that got high allocation were Education, N398.01 billion and Health with N252.86 billion.
Udoma explained that defence and the three other sectors needed to be well financed because they employed large manpower and provided critical services to the nation.
In 2016, the defence got recurrent expenditure of N294.556 billion and N134.572 billion as capital vote.